William Cranch Bond was born in Portland, Me., Sept. 9, 1789. He was the youngest son of William and Hannah (Cranch) Bond, who were natives of England. The family was of distinction there, and is genealogically traceable to the time of William the Conqueror, or earlier. The Brandon manor is said to have been granted by that monarch to the ancestor of this line, and to have been held by the family through many generations. William Bond was born In Plymouth, Eng. Richard Cranch, an uncle of Hannah, settled in Braintree, Mass, in 1751. The name, in himself and his descendants, became distinguished in the annals of the province and commonwealth. From him William Bond received information which induced him to emigrate to this country. He located for business purposes at Portland, then Falmouth, and engaged in cutting ship-timber at Frenchman’s bay, sending the commodity to England. He made a voyage thence to England, returning with his wife and elder children. The timber business proved in the end unprofitable and he removed to Boston in 1793, where he established himself in his vocation of clockmaker and silversmith, his stand being at the corner of Milk and Marlboro, now Washington street. The youth of William C. Bond was, accordingly, spent in Boston, where he had such education as the common schools afforded. Indeed, that he did not have fully that privilege, may be inferred from his remark quoted by Josiah Quincy, that pecuniary restrictions “obliged me to become an apprentice to my father before I had learned the multiplication table.” Mainly he was self-taught, though doubtless he derived instruction from his father, who was a well-informed man, and from some of the Cranch relatives, who were of good education. The traditions of the family and the facts of his career, indicate his mental quality to have been that of genius, one trait of which is that it absorbs congenial knowledge from unpromising materials and amidst adverse conditions. [Illustration: PROF. W. C. BOND.]